


Overwrite, Override

by AeroplanesR0ck



Series: Safe in Your Hands [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, HLV spoiler, M/M, Scars, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeroplanesR0ck/pseuds/AeroplanesR0ck
Summary: Sherlock decides to do something about a particular set of scars. Or rather, there's something he wants John to do about it. 
This story will not make sense unless you read In Safe Hands





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: pls go to a professional to get a tattoo done.

Sherlock is used to scars. He has many of them. His knees are covered in them- products of an active childhood. His arms are littered with the marks of a drug habit, now mostly beaten. His hands are covered in them- chemical burns and other similar mishaps. His back bears whip marks, from torture sessions while undercover- at times he enjoys the whip, but in that situation, it was neither consensual nor pleasurable in any way. His torso bears only two scars, on his chest and on his abdomen- one from one of John’s lovers, and one from one of his own. It’s fitting, he supposes, and poetic, in a way, but poetry aside, he doesn’t much like either of them. They do not inspire any nostalgia in him, nor is there anything noble in how they were acquired. They serve only as reminders of his own blindness and stupidity. 

The day Sherlock acquired the set of scars on his chest, he cried in John’s arms, and John held the pieces of him together, and cleaned him, and stitched him back together, and did everything in his power to make sure that something like that would never happen again. It didn’t stop there. Though Sherlock (drawing on his long experience with scars of various kinds) could care for the sutures perfectly well on his own, John would clean the site carefully twice a day, when Sherlock woke and before he went to bed. It became a ritual that soothed the both of them, the experience of caring and being cared for. Still, Sherlock was glad when, after a week and a half, the stitches dissolved, leaving slightly raised pink lines. 

It took months for the scars to fade. In that time, Sherlock got used to never looking at his shirtless self in a mirror, or looking down at his own body. Every time his eyes landed on the initials on his chest, his mind echoed the words that had been spoken as they were carved there.

_”...no matter how much you love him, he’ll never own you the way I do.”_

Luke Davis was wrong, and Sherlock knew it. John Watson did own him, body, heart, and mind. Luke Davis was wrong, but Sherlock’s own body appeared to prove Davis right. It took less than a year for Sherlock to decide he’d had enough of that.

*****

They are both coming down from a spectacular orgasmic high when Sherlock broaches the subject. Sherlock is lying on his side, facing John, one of his hands in John’s as John indulgently rubs the feeling back into Sherlock’s fingers. With his free hand, Sherlock touches his fingers to the scars he knows are still there, though the skin there now feels much the same as any other patch of skin on his body.

“I want you to do what he did.” He says.

John knows immediately what Sherlock means. His fingers still, and he gapes incredulously at Sherlock. “No! Why would you want that? You hate what he did.”

“Yes, but not because of what he _did_. Because of what it _meant_. He wanted to mark me as his. But I wasn’t. I didn’t want to be. With you, it’d be different.” 

John sighed, tugging Sherlock closer to wrap his arms around him. “I appreciate the sentiment. But it’s still a no.”

“But why?” There was a petulant note now in Sherlock’s voice. 

John gave a half-shrug. “I just don’t think I could. Even if you say you want it, it’d still feel like I’m injuring you. Which I would be doing. And I just can’t do that.”

Sherlock accepted this explanation graciously. John was ever cautious of Sherlock’s limits, functionally nonexistent as they were, and Sherlock was not about to push John past _his_ limits. He fell silent for a moment, thinking.

“What about a tattoo? A simple one. Just your name. Here.” He touched his fingers again to his chest.

John pictured this, a surge of possessive lust rising in him just at the idea. “Yeah, that’s- that’d be good.” He agreed. “Do you know where we could get it done?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I want you to do it.” He said insistently. 

John frowned. “Sherlock, learning to do something like that takes training, not just anyone can do it. And it’s permanent, if I mess up, it’ll be there forever. Plus, we don’t have any equipment.”

“You can learn.” Sherlock said staunchly. “I can get a loan of the equipment. You can practice on fruit. You’ve got steady hands, and it’s not like you need to do art, it’s just your name. You’ve been able to write it since you were four.”

John recognised the look in Sherlock’s eyes, and realised this was not a fight Sherlock was going to concede easily. Normally, John was perfectly capable of out-stubborning Sherlock, but in this case- he had a point.

“Okay.” He agreed.

*****

There was a slight snag in that plan- apparently, tattooing over scars is ‘inadvisable until a few years have passed'. Sherlock didn’t have patience for that.

“You don’t have to tattoo directly over it.” He decided. “I don’t want to make this all about him. It’s not. It’s about us.”

John cocked his head. “But I thought the point was that you didn’t want to see it.”

Sherlock shrugged. “So give me something else to look at.”

So Sherlock acquired the equipment, and John practiced for weeks, until he was completely familiar with the machine and the process, and he was certain that he could get the tattoo on Sherlock without messing up horribly somewhere. 

Lying on the bed as John got the machine ready, Sherlock thrummed with excitement. He could hardly wait to have John’s mark indelibly on his skin. As he stared up at the ceiling, John’s face came into view, a little crease between his eyebrows.

“Are you really sure about this, Sherlock? No going back from this.”

Sherlock smiled up at him. “There’s no going back from you, John.” He tugged John down, kissing him. “You’ve utterly ruined me for anyone else.”

John smiled. “I’m alright with that. No one else is allowed to have you.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Can you get on with it, then? Since we are agreement.”

John huffed and kissed him again. “Yeah, all right, keep your pants on.”

Sherlock snorted. “That’s not what you usually say.”

Once John actually managed to get down to work, the actual tattooing process took only a few minutes. Once done, John powered off the machine and wiped away the small smear of blood, the dark ink now standing out starkly against Sherlock’s pale skin. ‘John H. Watson’, Sherlock’s chest proudly proclaimed. 

The day Sherlock acquired the tattoo on his chest, he laid in John’s arms, smiling, and John held him, and smiled with him, and kissed the smile from his face. It didn’t stop there. John kissed him every day, on no particular schedule. He kissed him when he woke up in the morning, and before they went to bed together, and at random times during the day. Sherlock looked at himself in the mirror again. (A relief- even Sherlock had to admit he had a bit of a vain streak.) Sometimes he looked at the scars, and seeing them still filled him with regret. More often, though, his eyes were drawn up and to the left, to the words that were for him a source of strength and comfort. To words that declared that there was somewhere he belonged- with John. Which was just how he liked it.


End file.
